Chapter I. Of the mystery of the Man-God

Article I

Of ike eoccdlence of the Inca/rnoUion.

God has been pleased to honour human nature as much as He could honour it by communicating to a man the Divine Person of His Word, and to a woman the Divine maternity. God can produce nothing greater than a Man-God and a Mother of God. These two great works limit the omnipotence of God each in its own kind. They are the pinnacle of that height to which God can exalt His creatures.

Grace and glory ennoble us, and the sacred Humanity of JesuB Christ deifies grace and glory.

§n.

It is in the incarnation that God operates the rarest marvels of His power.

The first is the union of the Divinity with the Humanity. A siihstcmUal union, and in one and the same Person; hence it is called the hypostatic union^ because by it two substantial natures, the Divinity and the Humanity, remidn always distinct and are united one with the other in the Personality of the Word, so as to form but one Person. A union the strictest and the closest of all possible unions ; a union by which God is man and a man is God.

The second is the abasement of the Being of beings to nothingness. It is no marvel, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, that God should have drawn the whole universe from nothing ; that He should have " stretched out the heaven, and walked upon the wings of the winds :" but it is a wonder past all understanding that He should have reduced Himself to a state in which it may be said that He has annihilated Himself.

The third is the exaltation of man even to the throne of God. It is no matter of astonishment that man should be feeble, subject to error, sin, miseries, and death ; but that he should be almighty, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, impeccable, immortal, — this is a wonder of the omnipotence of God.

Our Lord also shews forth His almighty power in the Holy Eucharist, doing what He pleases with His Body, putting it in this sacramental state, uniting it to the species miraculously separated from their subject^ fiji^ and then to the faithful, who receive it to the sanctification of their souls.

After the incarnation, there is nothing more to be admired. It is dangerous to bestow our admiration on creatures. An incarnate God alone deserves it. To admire any thing in the order of nature is to shew how little virtue we possess.

§iv.

We have difficulty in believing certain extraordinary graces that we read of in the lives of the Saints. But he who believes the favour which God conferred on men by making Himself man ought to find no other incredible or surprising. All the communications which God can make after this are as nothing. God having given Himself in such wise to men^ can now refuse them nothing. It was to give them all else^ that He gave Himself in the incarnation. We have only to dispose ourselves by purity of heart, as did the Blessed Virgin.

Every thing in our Lord Jesus Christ belongs to us in a most especial manner. His holy Soul was created only out of love to us ; His sacred Body was formed only for our sakes ; His Humanity was united to the Divine Person of the Word only for the sake of men.

Article II

Of the Person oftlve Word, In the Man-God three personal properties are to be considered, which are as it were the source and foundation of all His greatness : He is the Son of God ; He is the Image of His Father ; He is His Word.

1. He is the Son of God properly and truly, because He proceeds from God the Father by way of generation, and is of the same nature as His principle. He is the Son of God in the most perfect manner possible. He is so necessarily, being necessarily begotten ; and He has not only a portion of the substance of His Father, as the children of men, but the whole substance of God the Father, and the whole plenitude of the Divinity.

2. He is the Image of God the Father, because He represents Him, and is His perfect image ; because He is like unto Him in every thing, and bears in all things the nature and the substance of His original, which cannot belong to any created image.

3. He is the Word of God. He is called the Word, the idea or spiritual portraiture which the understanding forms to itself of an object when it applies itself to the knowledge thereof. Thus God knowing Himself and all possible creatures, the term of this knowledge is His Word ; His image is His Son. And as the understanding is of all the faculties the purest and the most detached from matter, it is not possible to conceive a purity more perfect than that of the generation of the Word, who is produced by the understanding of God the Father ; thus by uniting Himself to our nature He joins uncreated purity to flesh ; a prodigy which will be the admiration of the angels for all eternity.

§ n- We participate in these three qualities of Jesus Christ, and it is this that forms our true greatness. This is the foundation of the perfection after which we ought to strive.

1. Jesus Christ is the Son of God ; we are also His children. He is His Son by nature, we are His children by adoption. We ought to live, as He lives, of the life of God, seeing that for this end He rendered us, like Him, partakers of the divine nature.

2. Jesus Christ is the image of God the Father. We ought to be the copies of that image. It is our model. We ought to express in ourselves the features of His resemblance. His virtues. His mind. His interior life, and His exterior life.

3. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. We ought to be His echoes, and respond faithfully to all His graces. We must be the echoes of His doctrine. His sentiments, and His whole conduct.

Article III

Why ike Son of God was to become inca/mate, a/nd not the FcUher or the Holy Spirit.

From the three preceding properties of the Son we may conclude, that it was He who was to become incarnate, and not the other two Persons of the Holy Trinity.

1. God was pleased to be made man that He might make men children of God. It was the Son, therefore, who was to take human nature, in order to associate it with His own divine Sonship, and make it partaker in His heritage.

2. God was pleased to be made man that He might give to men in a Man-God a visible model of a holy and divine life. It was the Second Person, therefore, who was to clothe Himself with a human body, in order to serve as a model of perfection to men, since it is this Person who is properly the image of God the Father.

3. God was pleased to be made man that He might teach men the truths of salvation. It was to the LogoSy therefore, that is to say, the Word of God, that it belonged to come into the world to teach mankind.

Article IV

Why the Son of God became inGO/mate by way of gem/eraJtion.

God might have become man without being bom of a woman ; He might have formed for Himself a body as He had formed that of Adam. But it was fitting, not only that it should be the Son of God who became incarnate, but that it should be by way of generation.

1. Because, so far as He is God, He is produced by way of generation ; thus also it was necessary that His temporal generation according to the humanity should correspond with His eternal generation according to the divinity.

2. In order to the creation of a Mother of God, — a dignity the highest of all that can be communicated to a pure creature.

3. Because the incarnation tends principally to deliver us from the original sin which we contract by being engendered of the race of Adam, and to make us children of God by the spiritual generation of Baptism.

4. In order that the holy and perfectly pure generation of Jesus Christ might sanctify that of men. For all that He took of us. He took that He might sanctify it in us : a soul, that He might sanctify our souls ; a body, that He might sanctify our bodies ; senses, exterior and interior, that He might sanctify ours; our labours, our pains, our sorrows, sin excepted, that He might sanctify all these in His adorable Person.